Category: The good life in old age

Old People as Their Own Best Teachers?

In my random reading this morning I ran across this quote from Yeats: “When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.”  The sentiment reminds me of James’ Beast in the Jungle – we spend life in preparation for some event, some epiphany, some revelation.

Bibliophiles like me have read a lot of books by the time they get old.  They might not remember all of them, but they have spent vast swaths of their lives living in a state of immersion in the reading experience.  As Ecclesiastes says, “And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”  And now, like the preacher at the end of Ecclesiastes, I am old and am only too aware of the “weariness of the flesh.”   It seems to me that there should be a time to stop reading and to try to make sense of what we have read, what we have learned.  Montaigne wonders when the old man will stop learning and be wise in what he has learned, and it seems to me that his own essays were an attempt to do just that.

But it is hard to give up.  The internet assures me that this one new book will explain things to me once and for all.  Or that the latest novel will change the way I think of the world, or I must read a newly translated book that was never-before available in English.  And it is not just the push-marketing of Amazon and the like; when I look something up on Wiki or do a Google search, I am presented with lists of books that will elucidate the very subject which I am interested in – and I can have an electronic version of said book within seconds. And then there are the prize-winning books, the best seller lists, the books I keep seeing people walking around with.  Surely, of the “making many books there is no end.”

But even without our buying books, myriads of books are available to us.  Libraries have a far vaster array of offerings than they used to have, as they pool their resources and make what we used to call inter-library loans so easy.  Anything we want is available one way or another – anything we want except the answers that will enable us to stop looking.

One of my early blogs (“Possessing That Which Was Mine”) was about a vow I made to read nothing new – to go back and reread what I had read for a second time and to take time to process what I had learned.  That did not last long.  After a few months, someone recommended something that “I absolutely had to read,” and I was off.

In addition, I have cabinets full of daily journals that go back 21 years, and sporadic journal entries and autobiographical fragments going back to my childhood.  I have manuscripts of novels and short stories that I have been meaning to edit for years, but never do.  I clearly like writing more than I like revision. just as I like reading a new book better than really taking time to absorb an old one.  I am getting to an age at which I either need to use this material or recycle it.  Do I really want my children to read my journals? (Not that they would have any interest.)

There are various ways to handle such material.  I have a friend who, cleaning out his own artwork, offered to send all his friends a piece.  I happily accepted.  Other friends have reduced their written work to one flash drive that they can slip in their pocket and jettison before death if they don’t want their heirs pouring through the story of their lives.

But I am not ready to jettison my precious words without review.  So, I have decided to do a moderated version of Swedish death cleaning with the recorded experiences and ideas in my life.  First of all, I am going to try to stick to re-reading rather than reading.  For light reading (which for me means mostly mysteries), having long forgotten the “who-done-it” for novels I read over thirty years ago, I have the joys of Ngaio Marsh, Amandra Cross, and Agatha Christie to look forward to again.  For more serious reading, I will start with the novels that have meant the most to me over the years, probably first going back to Herman Hesse, Jorge Borges, and George Eliot.  For non-fiction, I am currently rereading David Loy’s Lack and Transcendence, and will soon move on to Thoreau and Montaigne.

And as for my manuscripts, about ten years ago I drafted a novel (The Order of the Stock Farm Jesus – excerpt here) about an old woman who encounters a young girl who, for reasons of her own, wants to collaborate on writing a list of rules for life.  What are the rules you live by?  What is the difference between what you do and what you think you should do?  Writing this novel was a good exercise then, but ten years later it seems an even better one.  In conjunction with that project, I will start reading my own voluminous journals (young to old) to see what the lessons of my life were.  What can I teach myself?  Have I learned anything?  Can I put what I have learned into words?  More importantly, have I internalized these learnings and started to act accordingly? (Can you teach an old dog new tricks?)

Virginia Woolf kept journals, and – although she never got very old – said that she wrote precisely so that her older self could read her younger self: “Never mind; I fancy old Virginia, putting on her spectacles to read of March 1920, will decidedly wish me to continue. Greetings! my dear ghost…”  Marion Milner (A Life of One’s Own) started keeping journals in a desperate attempt to find out what it was in life that made her really happy.  Thoreau went to Walden and kept a journal to “front the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.”  I’ll let you know how my project goes, and – if you have attempted anything similar – please tell me about it!

I have written before on keeping journals in old age, “Journaling in Old Age.”  It’s not too late!  I didn’t start doing it seriously until I was 53, but I am so glad I did.  The benefits accrue not just in having a record, but in the very process of sorting out your thoughts every day, at transferring your experiences into words.  Try it.

If you have been journaling, you might look at an old blog, “Rules of One’s Own,” for ideas about how to mine your own words for life lessons.  You might also look at my fanciful short story, “Nothing New.”

Monadnock, Emerson, and the Need for a Still Point

I love Mount Monadnock.  I lived near it for about a decade and climbed it more than once. We could not see the mountain from our house, but its bald peak would surprise me as I drove over hills or around corners; it was a presence in my life. I also love Walden Pond, where I often went to walk and read when I lived closer.  What I did not know until recently was that Emerson bought his forty acres on the shores of Walden Pond in order to build a house with a view of Monadnock.  This, of course, was the “woodlot” on which Henry David Thoreau later built his cabin.  During my walks around Walden Pond, I have never glimpsed Mount Monadnock, but perhaps, when the trees had been mostly cleared, it was possible.  Maybe.

A monadnock is a particular geologic formation; it is an isolated area of harder rock that perseveres as the plain around it gets eroded and washed away.  Mount Monadnock is a monadnock, as is Stone Mountain in Georgia.  As I was thinking about monadnocks, I saw an analogy between a monadnock and an old person – perhaps we are what is left after the more ephemeral parts of life wash away.  Craggy.

But, back to Emerson and his desire to live with a view of the mountain.  Emerson actually wrote an ode to Monadnock, in which he says that the very presence of the stable mountain “Recallest us/ And makes us sane.”  Yes – that stabilizing influence we all need.  “Stand like a mountain,” say the meditation instructors.  T. S. Eliot exhorted us to look for the “still point of the turning world.”

Shelley and Robert Frost had a similar sentiment, albeit about stars.  “Bright star, would I were stedfast [sic] as thou art—” laments Shelley.  Frost describes the function of that steadfastness in “Choose Something Like a Star:”

It asks of us a certain height,

So when at times the mob is swayed

To carry praise or blame too far,

We may choose something like a star

To stay our minds on and be staid.

The idea is that we human beings need a center to keep us from going… nuts.  And it would appear that nuts is where we have been going lately.  Yeats, in “Second Coming,” says “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; /Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”   The last few months have surely seemed uncentered.  Without a “center”… anything goes.  Anything goes.  What sounded like a terrific motto for life when I was a young hippie seems, in old age, to pale in the face of reality.  (Our other motto was not to trust anyone over thirty, and now we find ourselves at the wrong end of that imperative!)

What is the solution?  Is our loss of moorings as a society owing to the decline in religious belief?  Some posit that this is so.  I recently read a piece by Arthur Brooke, the “happiness guy,” that said that after Brooke spent time a lot of time looking into what makes people happy, he decided to practice religion – in his case, Catholicism.  I will say that, for many people, this does not work.  Either they have a tough time working up enough faith to go through the motions or they become so fanatical that they create their own kind of anarchy.  But one must remember (and I am not trying to be flippant) that Dumbo’s feather enabled him to fly, even though he learned later that there was no magic in it at all.

If all standards are relative and all ethics situational – if lenience is the utmost good and rigidity always condemned, how could we not end up in this terrible place in our national life?  Flexibility is highly prized and yet it leaves us unanchored.  When new technologies like AI come along, we are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.  But this leniency leaves us vulnerable in ways both obvious and insidious.

My husband and I recently re-read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and then watched the BBC version.  Julius Caesar is surely a story of humans manipulating each other, but it is also a story of self-justification on all sides. Everyone saw the situation from the viewpoint of themselves.  Perhaps [a bad word here!], we need a non-negotiable standard.  I don’t have an answer, but I know an important question when I see it.

On the subject of Walden Pond, you might try my story, “Again and Again and Again.” For a story inspired by Mount Monadnock, you could try “Going Down Is the Most Dangerous Part.” For further discussion of Frost’s “Choose Something Like a Star,” you can look at an old post, “Old Age, Space Age.”

Anxiety in Old Age and the Eleventh and Twelfth Commandments of Second Mate Stubbs

I suffer from anxiety (ask anyone around me), but so do most old people.  And, of course, these are troubling times in every way.  I had always hoped that old age – assuming sufficient income and reasonable health – would be a time when I could finally relax; it is disappointing to find myself so anxious. I feel I should be old enough to know better, and surely old enough to realize that worry and anxiety (and one might throw in remorse) are useless states of mind.

There are things to worry about – I can give you lists of my concerns on the personal, national, and cosmic levels.  Of course we must try, as Niebuhr says, to “change the things that we can.” But worry and anxiety, in themselves, are ineffective against everything from tariff chaos to aging disorders. After we have done “what we can,” it is a matter of acceptance and control.  Some people find this through religion (Julian of Norwich assures us that “all things shall be well”), but that doesn’t work always or for everyone.  I tend to turn to Spinoza, who cautions us to rely on our rational capacities to keep ourselves on a calm and optimistic path (more on that here.)  Recently I found echoes of Spinoza in a self-help book by Judson Brewer: Unwinding Anxiety.  Brewer asserts that anxiety is a habit (I agree), and as old people we have had a long time to make sure that our habits are firmly entrenched.  How much of our day is unsettled by worry?  How much of our life?  My days are dwindling down to “those precious few.”  I don’t want “She Worried” sandblasted on my tombstone or on the memories of those I leave behind.

Brewer suggests breaking down anxiety into steps – Trigger, Behavior, Result.  In my case, the trigger is often a random thought, something that has just drifted through my poor brain to worry about.  My memory may be going, but my imagination has never been more ferocious.  So, one might say that most of my anxiety is self-inflicted.  No surprises there.  Of course, the trigger can be external: the stock market, an unexpected expense, or a change in health.  Whatever the trigger, the behavior is incessant worrying and generalized anxiety.  And the result is rumination, sleeplessness, inattentiveness, a mad search for distraction, and a generally bad day.  Brewer’s contention is that just by realizing what is going on, by stopping to identify each step in the process, we can be smart and inventive enough to change it.

It all sounds good, but it necessitates changing some pretty well-entrenched habits, habits written on our minds like wrinkles written on our faces.  Habits might have started in childhood as coping mechanisms and never got discarded.  But I am trying.  I have the time and the will, and I certainly have the triggers.

As you all know by now, I have been wallowing a bit in Moby-Dick lately.  I am reminded of the easy-going Stubbs, second mate of the Pequod, stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a dangerously fanatical captain (sound familiar?).  How does Stubbs keep smiling?  For one thing, he greatly enjoys the little pleasures of life, like eating the first steak cut from a killed whale:

Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.

“A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut me one from his small!”

But one might wonder how Stubbs keeps his appetite for such pleasures amid the challenges around him.  Melville knew we would wonder and, after an unfortunate encounter with Ahab, Stubbs gives us his rules of life:

“Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em. But that’s against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth — ”

Of course, we should think.  I read Stubbs’ 11th commandment as “worry not.”  And I am firmly in favor of his twelfth; although, as I age, I find going to sleep much easier than staying asleep, for if worry and anxiety are not useful, are not good for you, they are even deadlier in the wee hours.

Brewer and Spinoza both exhort us to use our rational powers to counter anxiety.  Again, I try.  I guess the most effective rational argument for me is this reflection:  How many of the things that I worried about have come to pass?  Almost none.  The tree never fell on the house, the stock market rebounded, I was never fired.  Did worrying help prevent any of these things?  It did not.  Most of the calamities that have affected my life could not have been anticipated.  I am old and I know all this.  Now I just have to convince my habit-chained brain to recognize the truth and listen to Stubbs.

I recently saw an old video clip of Huston Smith interviewing Mark Van Doren (here).  I recommend it.  In the course of the interview, Van Doren asserts that we have a duty to be happy.  (Again, I am reminded of Spinoza and his exhortation to be cheerful.)  Van Doren insists that we realize and accept the nature of the world around us.  In fact, he says that this is the function of literature: simply to lay out the world as it is, so that we have no illusions.  Literature should not be didactic, he says; but it should be true.  I will never accept everything, but I also know that I am often tilting at windmills, at things that cannot be changed.  And I suffer for it.  Stubbs and Spinoza help.

Meanwhile, we all deal with anxiety in our own way.  You might try my story, “A Spoonful of Sugar,” to see one way that some of us cope (or distract ourselves).

The Good Life in Old Age

Unlike the obscure and nitpicking scholastics of our time, classical philosophers spent more of their efforts in trying to define what makes a good life. Eudaimonia is a Greek word, meaning well-being, or, perhaps, something akin to personal happiness.  These earlier philosophers were interested in discovering and sharing the best ways to live, and how to hold those standards up against the reality of our own existence.  What could be more important?  And they were not just talking to other academics; they knew everyone was facing this challenge.  I have been thinking about these guys (and unfortunately, they are all guys) lately in regard to old age.  What makes a good old age?

The modern answer would seem to be: enough money to live and travel, enough energy to party and play pickleball, and children who are self-sufficient but ready to take care of us when we need them.  Our independence is of the greatest importance – we don’t want to be alone but we don’t want anyone else telling us what to do. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, but having experienced the personal trauma of moving this year and the collective trauma of what is going on with the economy and the government, I am grasping for something a little less material, a little more stable than finances, climate or personal health.

And there is some agreement among the philosophers about the good life.  Aristotle says that the exercise of our rationality and virtue will lead us to a good life.  So does Spinoza.  What would this look like in old age?  What would it mean to live rationally and virtuously in old age?

The Stoics (and I am thinking mainly of Epictetus) say that in old age, or at any time, to be happy, to live a good life, is to free ourselves from expectations:

The only way to a happy life (keep this rule at hand morning, noon, and night) is to stand aloof from things that lie outside the sphere of choice, to regard nothing as your own, and to surrender everything to the deity and fortune… and to devote yourself to one thing only, that which is your own and free from all hindrances.  (from The Discourses of Epictetus)

This is akin to the Buddhist exhortation not to be attached to things: to be attentive but not reliant, to do the right thing without concern for the consequences.  This is advice that we could all use, but probably a lesson we all should have learned by now.  If you haven’t experienced the disappointments of the plans of mice and men by now, you are fortunate indeed.  Nevertheless, true detachment is hard to come by.  And in old age, things we are attached to fall away at an alarming rate, so we had better be good at renunciation.

Then there is the matter of remorse, regret and atonement in old age.  (I have written about this previously in “Old Karma, Instant Karma.”)  Cicero warns us that the mistakes of our youth will follow us into old age.  Yes, we all know that.  Spinoza gives the best advice in this regard (as in most regards): “Repentance is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason; instead, he who repents what he has done is twice wretched, or lacking in power.”  “Twice wretched” reminds me of Nietzsche’s caution that remorse was like “adding to the first act of stupidity a second.” The Buddha calls remorse “the second arrow.”  Something outside us wounds us the first time; our remorse keeps opening the wound.  Some religions have rites and rituals to help us to atone and erase. Again, if you have reached old age without remorse, you are blessed.

So, we should be rational, ethical, and at peace with our past.  What does this mean?  Cicero is very specific about a good old age: “the tranquil and serene evening of a life spent in peaceful, blameless, enlightened pursuits.”  I agree with the aim, but the methodology often eludes me.  Each of us can only define it for ourselves. We must try; we must work at it.  As Spinoza says at the end of the Ethics:

If the way I have shown to lead to these things [peace of mind] seems very hard, still, it can be found.  And of course, what is found so rarely must be hard.  For if salvation [the ethical and intellectual state of freedom] were at hand, and could be found without great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it?  But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

 I recently read Florida Scott-Maxwell’s memoir of old age (recommended), written when she was in her 80s and in a nursing home:

I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing age that it is a time of discovery.  If they say, “Of what?” I can only answer “We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it won’t be discovery.”

In these times when the stock market is being undermined, when mores are changing, and the known is disappearing into the maw of the suspect, what better time for an internal “excellent adventure.”  Spinoza pursued this question while he was ostracized from his community and dying of spoiled lungs.  Florida Scott-Maxwell did it in a nursing home.  Epictetus did it as a slave.  We should be able to do this. I can give you no more than encouragement and reading lists (more on that in another blog).

You won’t hear the answers from Cicero or Epictetus or Spinoza or Aristotle.  Or me. That would be too easy.  But you might hear some of the right questions to ask yourself.

On a lighter note, I long ago drafted a story (“It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) on the use of music to improve our mood – one way to a good life, at least in the moment. It’s something I pay attention to, and I know exactly what old songs will temporarily soothe my beast.  But, as the story points out, it is a band-aid and not a remedy.  The remedy would seem to be much harder.